Editor's note: ClusterWorX is a registered trademark of Linux NetworX.

Linux clusters, which network multiple processors together to form a unified and more powerful system, are becoming a major technology in seismic data processing. Almost every major exploration group now boasts a Linux cluster of dozens, if not hundreds, of these processors, or “nodes.”

A node within a Linux cluster is the basic unit of processing. Typically, it is a server or workstation dedicated to the seismic processing task. Software spreads the seismic task across all nodes and collects and reconstructs the results. Although traditional supercomputer programs must be adapted...